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Ha'aretz, Israel
Dec 30 2011
When whitewashing wins out
We have here a struggle between the hypocritical good guys (Europe )
and the sincere bad guys (Turkey and sometimes Israel ), who've not
accepted the fact that history is nothing but a sequence of
narratives.
By Benny Ziffer
Any cultured nation that rummages around in its past will find that
its ancestors were responsible for horrible, intolerable deeds.
National memory, however, is usually quick to falsify history, and
lend it a respectable aura.
To understand the magnitude of the distortion and inhumanity entailed
in such a process, it suffices to read the books of the late
German-American historian George Mosse, who studied the falsification
mechanism of the collective modern-European memory. The European
countries took the trouble - and are still doing so - not only to
cover up the horrors they perpetrated on members of other nations, but
above all to conceal the magnitude of the murderousness they inflicted
on their own citizenry when, in all their national arrogance, they
sent millions of young people to their deaths and then covered this up
by establishing all kinds of commemorative rites and elaborate
memorials.
A number of nations on the margins of European culture have had the
bad luck to have neglected, for various reasons, the colossal effort
of cover-up and falsification, or woken up to it too late, thereby
finding themselves the target of attacks from their more industrious
sister-countries. For there is nothing more embarrassing - and
therefore deserving of punishment - than publicly exposing things that
most people do outside of the limelight.
This, in my opinion, is the source of Europe's accusation of Turkey in
the matter of the "Armenian Holocaust": "You idiots, of course it's
clear all of us screwed up, but we have at least bothered to disguise
things and lie properly, and to cover up the screw-ups with elaborate
gilded monuments - whereas you fell asleep on your watch and present
the world with a job half done. So: naughty, naughty, naughty you!"
There is something especially embarrassing in the historical affair
that has been named the Armenian Holocaust: After the historical
account of the most terrible and absurd war of all, World War I was
laundered and presented anew in a falsified way agreed on by all the
cultured nations of Europe - all of a sudden a stubborn blot of truth
appeared at the edges of the cover-up, which had not been dealt with
properly. A huge screw-up. Not only the horror itself, but rather the
fact that not enough was done to transform it into a rosy memory, the
way the other cultured nations did with respect to the horrors taking
place within their areas of responsibility during that war.
That is to say, we have here above all a struggle between the
hypocritical good guys (the nations of Europe ) and the sincere bad
guys (Turkey, and by analogy, sometimes also Israel ), who in their
foolishness have not accepted the fact that history is in any case
nothing but a sequence of narratives. Or that the time has come to
give up the passion for being absolutely right and to start being
smart - i.e., hypocritical, i.e., prepared to update the national
narrative in the spirit of the times.
After all, there is nothing more fake and hypocritical - albeit also
immeasurably effective and smart - than Germany's unambiguous
acknowledgment of its responsibility for the Holocaust of European
Jewry. In the long term, the narrative has proven itself perfectly,
from Germany's perspective: The unquestioned acknowledgment of its
responsibility has made it appear to be a responsible adult, worthy of
leading the European Union. And thanks to Germany's courage in openly
admitting its guilt, over time, people, including even the Jews, began
to admire that country and to divert their hatred from it to the
Poles, the Lithuanians and other small nations that collaborated with
Nazi Germany.
My late father, a native of Austria whose life was saved during World
War II thanks to Turkey, was capable of throwing out of our a house a
guest who dared to mention the Armenian Holocaust in his presence.
Eventually, I myself traveled to eastern Turkey, where I saw the
destroyed Armenian towns. In the city of Van I visited the museum the
Turks built to commemorate the Armenian Holocaust: In their version,
it was the Armenians who perpetrated a holocaust on the Turks and on
themselves. Indeed, that same museum offers proof of the horrors
inflicted with the help of the Russians on the inhabitants of eastern
Turkey during World War I.
According to official Turkish history, what came afterward was a
drastic but legitimate response to the atrocities committed by the
Armenians, who had hoped to establish a state of their own in eastern
Turkey on the ruins of the sinking Ottoman Empire.
Not long ago, during a visit to the annual Istanbul Book Fair, I
stopped in front of the booth of the state of Azerbaijan. In one of
the books I leafed though, my eyes lit upon a picture of a mass grave
discovered in the city of Guba, where at the end of World War I
Armenian troops buried the corpses of hundreds of Azeri Turks - among
them, quite a number of Mountain Jews living in the area. All this is
part of a continuing conflict between the Armenians and their Muslim
neighbors, which has not ended to this day.
Is there anyone who remembers the Armenian slaughter of Azeri Turks in
the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which shocked the world when it took
place, about 20 years ago? If anyone does, please keep quiet, because
this is likely to spoil the accepted narrative.
In other words: It is not fashionable these days to ask the question
of who's absolutely right when dealing with conflicts between peoples.
And the Turks, just like us, the Israelis, are tiring the world with
childishly stubborn attempts to prove it was the others who started
and that they were only reacting to their enemies' aggression, and so
on and so forth. And the exhausted world mutters: "Okay, we get it -
but for heaven's sake, when will you finally understand that what
works nowadays is a nice narrative?"
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/when-whitewashing-wins-out-1.404545
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Dec 30 2011
When whitewashing wins out
We have here a struggle between the hypocritical good guys (Europe )
and the sincere bad guys (Turkey and sometimes Israel ), who've not
accepted the fact that history is nothing but a sequence of
narratives.
By Benny Ziffer
Any cultured nation that rummages around in its past will find that
its ancestors were responsible for horrible, intolerable deeds.
National memory, however, is usually quick to falsify history, and
lend it a respectable aura.
To understand the magnitude of the distortion and inhumanity entailed
in such a process, it suffices to read the books of the late
German-American historian George Mosse, who studied the falsification
mechanism of the collective modern-European memory. The European
countries took the trouble - and are still doing so - not only to
cover up the horrors they perpetrated on members of other nations, but
above all to conceal the magnitude of the murderousness they inflicted
on their own citizenry when, in all their national arrogance, they
sent millions of young people to their deaths and then covered this up
by establishing all kinds of commemorative rites and elaborate
memorials.
A number of nations on the margins of European culture have had the
bad luck to have neglected, for various reasons, the colossal effort
of cover-up and falsification, or woken up to it too late, thereby
finding themselves the target of attacks from their more industrious
sister-countries. For there is nothing more embarrassing - and
therefore deserving of punishment - than publicly exposing things that
most people do outside of the limelight.
This, in my opinion, is the source of Europe's accusation of Turkey in
the matter of the "Armenian Holocaust": "You idiots, of course it's
clear all of us screwed up, but we have at least bothered to disguise
things and lie properly, and to cover up the screw-ups with elaborate
gilded monuments - whereas you fell asleep on your watch and present
the world with a job half done. So: naughty, naughty, naughty you!"
There is something especially embarrassing in the historical affair
that has been named the Armenian Holocaust: After the historical
account of the most terrible and absurd war of all, World War I was
laundered and presented anew in a falsified way agreed on by all the
cultured nations of Europe - all of a sudden a stubborn blot of truth
appeared at the edges of the cover-up, which had not been dealt with
properly. A huge screw-up. Not only the horror itself, but rather the
fact that not enough was done to transform it into a rosy memory, the
way the other cultured nations did with respect to the horrors taking
place within their areas of responsibility during that war.
That is to say, we have here above all a struggle between the
hypocritical good guys (the nations of Europe ) and the sincere bad
guys (Turkey, and by analogy, sometimes also Israel ), who in their
foolishness have not accepted the fact that history is in any case
nothing but a sequence of narratives. Or that the time has come to
give up the passion for being absolutely right and to start being
smart - i.e., hypocritical, i.e., prepared to update the national
narrative in the spirit of the times.
After all, there is nothing more fake and hypocritical - albeit also
immeasurably effective and smart - than Germany's unambiguous
acknowledgment of its responsibility for the Holocaust of European
Jewry. In the long term, the narrative has proven itself perfectly,
from Germany's perspective: The unquestioned acknowledgment of its
responsibility has made it appear to be a responsible adult, worthy of
leading the European Union. And thanks to Germany's courage in openly
admitting its guilt, over time, people, including even the Jews, began
to admire that country and to divert their hatred from it to the
Poles, the Lithuanians and other small nations that collaborated with
Nazi Germany.
My late father, a native of Austria whose life was saved during World
War II thanks to Turkey, was capable of throwing out of our a house a
guest who dared to mention the Armenian Holocaust in his presence.
Eventually, I myself traveled to eastern Turkey, where I saw the
destroyed Armenian towns. In the city of Van I visited the museum the
Turks built to commemorate the Armenian Holocaust: In their version,
it was the Armenians who perpetrated a holocaust on the Turks and on
themselves. Indeed, that same museum offers proof of the horrors
inflicted with the help of the Russians on the inhabitants of eastern
Turkey during World War I.
According to official Turkish history, what came afterward was a
drastic but legitimate response to the atrocities committed by the
Armenians, who had hoped to establish a state of their own in eastern
Turkey on the ruins of the sinking Ottoman Empire.
Not long ago, during a visit to the annual Istanbul Book Fair, I
stopped in front of the booth of the state of Azerbaijan. In one of
the books I leafed though, my eyes lit upon a picture of a mass grave
discovered in the city of Guba, where at the end of World War I
Armenian troops buried the corpses of hundreds of Azeri Turks - among
them, quite a number of Mountain Jews living in the area. All this is
part of a continuing conflict between the Armenians and their Muslim
neighbors, which has not ended to this day.
Is there anyone who remembers the Armenian slaughter of Azeri Turks in
the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which shocked the world when it took
place, about 20 years ago? If anyone does, please keep quiet, because
this is likely to spoil the accepted narrative.
In other words: It is not fashionable these days to ask the question
of who's absolutely right when dealing with conflicts between peoples.
And the Turks, just like us, the Israelis, are tiring the world with
childishly stubborn attempts to prove it was the others who started
and that they were only reacting to their enemies' aggression, and so
on and so forth. And the exhausted world mutters: "Okay, we get it -
but for heaven's sake, when will you finally understand that what
works nowadays is a nice narrative?"
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/when-whitewashing-wins-out-1.404545
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress